Yesterday: Lots of heavy rain and high winds (moved my 60 pound kayak, lots of trees down in the area, bird feeds are down, lawn furniture all over the place).

Today: Started with rain, then sleet, then snow and now it's sleetish....temperatures dropping...glad that we don't HAVE to be on the roads today. I imagine power will be out in some areas of the county before bedtime.

I've heard "colder than a whore's heart" but never "a step-mother's kiss". Perhaps a "mother-in-law's kiss"?

8 with drizzle here but I saw crows massing at dawn. I have been waiting and watching for the migration... got my camcorder and camera at the ready. I wish I had been more on the ball a few years back. When I noticed it, they were directly over me and it was awesome but I stood and watched for at least five minutes before I even thought of a vid. By the time I was set up it was too far away to be impressive.

I watched a shorebird migration at dusk in PEI about thirty years ago. Remarkable how millions of birds wait their turn and join in, from north to south along the shore. As do the crows in similar fashion. Fascinating.

I'm finding this hard to believe, even though I saw it myself. My neighbour's recording thermometer showed a lowest temperature last night of -24C. It was -16C when I set off for work this morning. This was in the southern end of the Peak District, in the Staffordshire Moorlands. I've never seen temperatures that low in the UK.

It's 9.05am here in beautiful Somerset, and it is -5 degrees. No snow at the moment, but there is a thick hoar frost covering everything. I don't remember a frost this thick even in Aberdeen last year. It's also colder than Aberdeen last year, although not by much. The sky is a uniform white and I can't tell if it's fog, cloud or if the sun hasn't made it over the top of the garage yet. It all looks very spooky.

Fog is everywhere, and our usual view of the Mendips is shrouded in fog. In fact, The forecast for today is 'fog'.

Fog followed by gorgeous sun yesterday, today dense freezing fog. Okay the novelty of winter has now worn off. Some sun is forecast for the rest of the week - we are just thankful that it isn't windy to add to the chill.

Don't know where you are, Patsy, but this sounds like our weather. It was beautifully sunny yesterday - still very cold but from the inside it looked warm, and it actually warmed up our enclosed south-facing front porch. Today it looks bleak and cold with, as you said, dense freezing fog, but thankfully not a breath of wind. Nearly 11am now, and still -4 degrees. BRRRR!

Ah yes, Patsy, you're not all that far away. I'm in Cossington, near Bridgwater. It's been like this all day and now it's even colder - minus 6 degrees according to the weather on my computer. Tomorrow looks like more of the same.

Today we were in town, in Bridgwater, and the air was so cold it was making my teeth ache when I opened my mouth to say something.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and brave the cold for a while to take some macro shots with my camera of the ice crystals on the leaves. It's actually quite beautiful!

Saw some flowers trying to sprout yestreen..50.1 degrees at 4:30 p.m. No wind to speak of..no rain. Warmest place in state of Washington USA. Could not be better for a December day. I think we still have rhododendruns blooming in some places, especially the dark red ones. Pinks bloomed last month but are done now. mg

It's 29 balmy deg C in our beer garden this morning....that's 84.2 deg F for those not fortunate enough to be in Oz....and because we now live in the country well away from the coast the humidity is quite bearable. The view from the beer garden is birds, magpies, rosellas and galahs singing and sqwarking in the trees. We have a native reserve on the other side of our back fence and the birds provide us with endless entertainment.

It's not raining today for a change, but more is forecast tomorrow, and we are well away from floods but it could happen here - we had a flood in late July. But if the flood waters ever get to our house on the hill.......then the rest of Oz is really in deep shit.

Gnu, a beer garden is the back garden of a pub - most Ozzie pubs have an outside area where kids are allowed, some pubs have a beautifully landscaped beer garden, others are more rough and ready. But "beer garden" is the official term, some pubs even have a sign pointing out the whereabouts of theirs.

The back of our house is L-shaped, the previous owner had filled in the L with brick paving, roofed it over, and added a low lattice wall. It's a lovely spot to watch the birds in the reserve, on the hill, over the fence. Here's a view of ours.

Well, in the swampy bog hole I live in, it actually stopped raining and the sun came out for a couple of hours today, long enough to actually run the mower over part of the waist high grass... before it started raining again. Of course, it's not raining now, but the mower doesn't have headlights, and the neighbors might complain anyway about mowing in the dark ...

5 States are flooded over substantial parts, and in the parts that are not, we have swarms of locusts. 9 major river systems are flooded, looks like water will reach Lake Eyre again. Looks like we don't have many bushfires so far this year, would be a bloody miracle if water burned, I suppose....

JennyO, Bridgwater is not too far away 'as the crow flies' so I expect it is pretty much the same. Today a bit of a breeze is picking up too. Hopefully there won't be any heavy snow fall too close to Christmas. It can do what it likes after that.

Yesterday was the best of all for freezing fog and amazing pictures. Haven't got them off the camera yet, but I got some fantastic macro shots of leaves with ice crystals around them, icy spider webs everywhere, and more distant shots of the winter wonderland. The locals reckon they haven't seen anything like this, or experienced these low temperatures for 20 years or more. I don't think it got above -6 degrees.

I was really glad I braved the cold yesterday to get the pics, because today the sun came out, and although there was still a lot of white and frost everywhere all day, the amazing ice crystals on things had gone. It's a balmy -2 now :)